Betty

by Tiffany McDaniel

  “I be south of heaven.” In great wonder, I looked up at the sky.

  “Ain’t nowhere else to be,” he said.

  He pinched his cigarette out and shoved it inside his boot. He pretended to drop a stub down my shoe, but I was barefooted so he tickled my heel until I laughed.

  “Ain’t no bigger,” he said of my foot, measuring it against his hand. “Won’t never be so small ever again.”

  “I won’t let it get any bigger, Dad.”

  “Oh, you won’t, will you?” He chuckled as he set my foot back down. “We best get some rest. Got a long drive tomorrow. We’ll see Ohio by the afternoon if we’re lucky.”

  “Can I sleep on the hood with ya?”

  “Don’t you think you’ll get cold?” he asked.

  “I’ve got a scarf.” I wrapped my long black hair around my neck. “See?”

  “You sure you wouldn’t wanna sleep in the Rambler?”

  “I’d rather sleep on Mars, which by the way, I wrote a new story about. I wrote it on a napkin at the diner when we were passin’ through Louisiana, but I forgot it.”

  “You forgot the story?” he asked.

  “Oh, no.” I shook my head. “I forgot the napkin. I remember the story. My best Martian story yet.”

  “You’re always writin’ ’bout Mars. I guess you got some Martian blood in ya.”

  “Hey, Martian blood is what my story is about.”

  “This I gotta hear.” He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles.

  “Well, the Martians,” I began, “they wanna invade earth.”

  “It seems Martians are always wantin’ what’s ours,” he said.

  “Just the way they’re bent, I guess. To invade us, they send birds,” I said, trying to make a bird shape with my hands. “The kind only found on Mars. The birds have wings identical to the checkerboard menus from the diner. Their bodies are like the diner’s ketchup bottles and their heads are upside-down cups.”

  “Like the cups me and your momma drank our coffee from?” he asked, holding an imaginary coffee cup to his lips and slurping.

  “Yep. And the birds’ legs are long soda spoons, like what Trustin used when he ate his orange float. The ends of the spoons are bent and carry Martian blood. As the birds fly to earth, the blood falls out. Each drop of blood seeps into our earth like a seed. Before anybody knows it, they all got Martians growin’ in their backyard.”

  “What do these Martians look like?”

  “Instead of skin like you and me have, a Martian’s skin is made of blue checkered tablecloths.”

  “I think the diner had those, too, didn’t it?” he asked with a wide smile.

  “Sure did.” I nodded. “For fingers, the Martians have bendy straws.” I bent my fingers toward his face. “Like the white straw with red stripes I drank my strawberry milkshake from. Remember that red flag blowin’ outside the diner? Had that big blue X with white stars?”

  “I remember it.” His smile faded.

  “That’s what the Martians’ hair is, only cut into strips for ease of brushin’. They’ve all got pickle eyebrows like the pin our waitress wore and their eyes are the same as the diner’s ola…ola…”

  “Olallieberry,” Dad helped me with the word.

  “Olallieberry pies,” I said, “the juices from the berries runnin’ down. Rargh, rargh.” I pawed at my cheeks until Dad laughed so hard he coughed.

  “They got salt and pepper shaker antennas,” I continued, “and shrunken-down dinner forks for teeth. It’s their fork teeth that’s gonna kill us because when them Martians get done growin’, they’ll break from their roots and smile at us. The shine from their metal teeth will make everyone crazy and we’ll kill each other until only Martians remain.”

  Dad shimmied his shoulders as he said, “You got me so nervous I’m gonna be lookin’ to the sky for ketchup bottle birds. What do you call this jewel of caution?”

  “ ‘The Smilin’ Martians,’ ” I sang out, sticking my tongue through the hole in my smile where I’d lost a baby tooth the previous week.

  “ ‘The Smilin’ Martians’ might be my favorite story yet,” Dad said.

  We both turned to a thumping coming from the dark of the woods.

  “What’s that?” I pushed his hat up on my forehead in order to see better.

  “Maybe it’s one of your Martians,” Dad said. “We best get to the Rambler before the ol’ alien finds us and smiles.”

  He picked me up from off the tree and set my feet softly on the ground.

  “Ain’tcha gonna get your jar of moonshine?” I asked.

  “Naw,” he said. “We’ll let the Martian have it. That way he’ll just fall right asleep and not be a bother the rest of the night.”

  I grabbed his hand as we walked through the woods. He limped with every step. Two years had passed since the mine incident, but it was still fresh in my mind. The color of Dad’s blood. The way the coal dust had settled into the pained lines of his face. I thought of how he had said they’d smashed his knee like glass. I wondered if, like glass, sharp edges cut into him. He certainly walked as if they did. I decided to limp, too, so he wouldn’t be alone. He looked at me, then tried not to limp so much himself.

  “Can I sleep on the hood with ya, Dad?” I asked again. “It’s too crowded in the Rambler. Mom is like a million people all in herself. When you think of it like that, you’ve got Fraya, Flossie, Trustin, Lint, Mom, and a million more people. You can’t have a basket full of jars without the glasses bickerin’ and clankin’ against one another. You said that once. Remember?”

  “I did, did I?”

  “Hmm-mmm. Sure did, Dad. So can I sleep on the hood with ya?”

  “You have to promise you won’t get cold, Betty.”

  “I promise, promise, promise, promise, promise,” I repeated until he held up his hand and laughed.

  “I reckon there’s room on the hood for a big Indian and a little one,” he said.

  I squeezed his hand as we limped together. When we passed the Rambler, Flossie stuck her tongue out at me. I returned the gesture. Then she said goodnight, so I said it back. Both Flossie and I said goodnight to Fraya at the same time.

  “Goodnight,” Fraya said.

  Dad lifted me up and set me feet first on the hood. I played with the raccoon tail tied to the antenna before putting the hat on top of it as Dad climbed up on the hood himself. He waved inside the car to Mom, but she was already asleep, stretched across the front seat with one leg perched on top of the steering wheel. Her snores sounded like animals scavenging for food with their snouts in the dirt.

  “All right, Betty. Here’s your hard bed.” Dad patted the hood as he laid his upper body up against the windshield.

  “Dad?” I asked as I sat beside him. “Did you like my Martian story? The truth.”

  “I really did.”

  Before I could say anything more, I heard a car door squeak open and softly close, followed by the padding of little feet against the twigs on the ground.

  “No s-s-sleep.” Lint came up on Dad’s side of the hood.

  Lint was rubbing his teary eyes with the backs of his fists. His little pockets bulged from rocks he had collected.

  “Well, son, you’re in luck because I got sleepin’ dust in my pocket,” Dad said as he pulled Lint up on the hood and put him in between us.

  “You still afraid to go to sleep?” Dad asked him.

  A couple of weeks prior, Lint had drawn a picture that showed a black scribble above his stick figure body. He was only four at the time, so his drawing had less meaning than when he explained it. He told Dad the black scribble was the night and that should he fall asleep, the night would steal his soul.

  “My s-s-soul,” Lint had said as he made the black scribble darker. “Night take it, Daddy. Take it to b
-b-bury it. North. In the c-c-cold.”

  Remembering Lint’s drawing, I looked out into the darkness around us as Dad promised Lint the night wouldn’t steal his soul.

  “I won’t let it.” Dad wrapped his arms around Lint.

  “You can’t s-s-stop it, Daddy.”

  “Your soul is right here.” Dad gently laid his hand over the bridge of Lint’s nose. “I’ll keep my hand on it all night long while you sleep. Your soul will be here when you wake in the mornin’. I swear.”

  While Lint laid his head against Dad’s chest, I curled up alone on the edge of the hood.

  5

  Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks?

  —JOB 39:13

  WELCOME TO BREATHED was painted in red on a splintery shred of barn wood nailed to an American sycamore. I would come to learn that between heaven and hell, Breathed was a piece of earth inside the throb, where lizards were crushed beneath wheels and the people spoke like thunder grinding on thunder. There, in southern Ohio, you woke to the barks of stray dogs while always aware of the shadows of larger wolves.

  “How you say the town’s name again?” Trustin asked. “Breathed?”

  “Not like you breathed somethin’ in.” Dad looked through the rearview mirror at Trustin. “Say it like you’re takin’ a breath, then you say ed. Breath-ed.”

  All around, the hills stood like a great exclamation from man to the heavens. Known as the foothills of the Appalachians, the exposed sandstone formed ridges, cliffs, and gorges shaped and cut by glacier melting. Covered in a green mix of moss and lichen, the ancient sandstone was named after the things it resembled. There was the Devil’s Tea Table, Lame Deer, and the Giant’s Shadow. Names handed down to each new generation as if they were as valuable as heirloom jewels.

  Passing through the hills and cutting across the land were not roads or streets but lanes, as the locals called them, as if to say the dirt-covered tracks were nothing more than widened paths. Main Lane was where Saint Sammy’s, Moogie’s Toy Store, Fancy’s Dress Shop, and other businesses were. From Main Lane branched residential lanes where every house had a family Bible and a good recipe for bread. Farther out, homesteads owned the acreage. In her most wholesome form, Breathed was a wife and mother who made sure to hang her flag banners on her porch rails every Fourth of July. At her darkest, she was the place you could bleed to death in without a single open wound.

  Dad drove into Breathed slowly, like someone careful of where he steps. A white-haired man holding a yellow balloon soon came into view. He was standing by the edge of a wood line.

  “Hey, old fella.” Dad hollered out his open window as he waved at the man.

  “Landon Carpenter?” The man waved back. “That really you?”

  Dad’s answer was a short honk of the car’s horn as we continued past.

  “That was ol’ Cotton Whithers,” Dad told us kids as we stared back at the man still waving with both arms.

  “Hasn’t stopped sendin’ his letters, I see,” Mom said as she watched the yellow balloon float up into the sky.

  I turned my attention to the town around us. We had lived in wildernesses before. Trees as tall as the men were not. Meadows as lovely as the women were. Yet there was something different about Breathed. It seemed to inhale and exhale as if it was not a town that had been created by humankind, but a place born unto it. I wanted to write Breathed into a poem. I would rhyme the words if I must, but speak them like I was throwing stones into a river. That seemed the only way to represent a place where the dirt lanes looked like brown diamond snakes laid out, the scales reflecting the sunlight.

  As Dad made a sharp turn, I looked up to see the lane sign.

  “Shady Lane,” I said the name aloud.

  Towering trees lined both sides, their branches braiding like cold rivers. The lane dead-ended at the drive to our property, which was acres of woods and uncut field. In the overgrown drive, there was a red car. Standing up against it was Leland. He was on leave and Dad had written him about the new house, so Leland said he would meet us there. He was twenty-two then. His blonde hair was cut short and he was wearing his army service uniform.

  Trustin squealed Leland’s name when he got out of the car.

  “Where’d you get that fancy new car from?” Dad asked as he stared at the shine of Leland’s car.

  “Oh, just borrowin’ it from a friend,” Leland said.

  “You bring anything back from Japan for us?” Trustin asked.

  Leland had written letters about having recently been stationed in Japan. He’d gotten us dreamy-eyed about the things he wrote. Women with white paint on their faces. Beautiful kimonos dragging the ground. Roofs which he said were called pagodas but were shaped like stacked squash blossoms.

  “Heck, sure, I gotcha somethin’.” Leland handed Trustin a paperweight with swirls of color inside it. For Lint, there was a round gray rock.

  “I dug it up from Japanese soil myself,” Leland told him.

  “Look how round it is,” Dad said to Lint. “It looks like a big old eye.”

  Lint smiled at the thought.

  Flossie jumped up and down when Leland gave her a hand fan. She held it to her face and fluttered her lashes behind its illustrations of white butterflies and gilded leaves.

  My present was a pink silk box. Inside was a pair of pajamas in the same silk. They had frog closures and knotted buttons. I was used to fabrics like denim, cotton, and flannel, but not silk. I’d never felt something so soft. I held it to my cheek while Flossie picked up a sleeve and held it to hers.

  “It feels so cool,” Flossie said, smiling.

  “You know silk comes from a worm,” Dad said.

  “A worm?” Flossie pulled back. “Ugh.”

  Leland reached into the car and lifted out a jewelry box. It was the length of my whole arm. The top of it was shaped as a pagoda roof. On the shiny black lacquer were paintings of bonsai trees and lotus plants. Two front doors opened to a silk-lined interior that had little drawers and compartments surrounding a small female figurine who twirled to the music. Leland handed the box to Fraya, who awkwardly held it in her arms, quickly closing the doors so the music stopped.

  “How come Fraya’s gift is so big?” Flossie asked as she closed her fan.

  Leland wiped his hands on his pants before getting two small bird figurines out of his glove compartment. The birds were made of red glass. He gave one to Mom and the other to Dad.

  “It’s real, real nice, son.” Dad patted Leland’s shoulder.

  Leland stepped back and dug both his hands in his pockets as he nodded toward the house.

  “I waited for y’all to get here,” he said. “I ain’t even peeped in the windas none.”

  Dad handed Mom his bird to hold with hers as he opened his arms out to the acreage.

  “Can you believe it?” he asked. “All this land no one can tell us to get off of.”

  Each of us took our own path through the tall, patchy grass. There was an unattached garage where a raccoon darted. The house itself was large and heavily guarded by dark evergreen bushes. It appeared to belong to the earth more than it did to man. Entire walls exploded in ivy, and vines wrapped the surviving rails on the porch while pervading brush growing beneath the open bottom of the porch gave it a tilt to the right. There were mud dauber nests, hanging like hollowed-out rods, while darting lizards were not in want of hiding places.

  “I’m gonna catch a hundred and keep ’em all in my room,” Trustin said as he chased the reptiles.

  The house was two stories, not including the attic. Its Victorian architecture had been distorted until it was nothing more than an old-fashioned dream tied down by the shadows of the pines that grew against its sides.

  We walked up the rickety porch steps cautiously, as if they could collapse at any moment. Dad tested the strength of t
he porch posts by gripping each with both hands.

  “She’s steady,” he said.

  Mom was the last of us. Her heel had gotten stuck in the crack on the top step. She cursed as Dad tried to free her.

  “The place is a trap,” she said, putting her weight on his shoulder while she looked at the house. Its wooden boards had at one time been painted yellow, but that paint had peeled, exposing the naked wood, as eroded as the sandstone.

  “What a dump,” Mom said the very second Dad freed her shoe.

  “It’s worth its weight in acreage alone,” he was quick to say. “Besides, ain’t nothin’ that can’t be fixed.”

  “Along with everything else, huh?” Mom’s tone was flat as she stared up at the sag in the porch’s ceiling.

  Walking toward the front door, we stepped around the tall prickly weeds growing through the spaces in the floor. The large picture window was not broken, but it was cracked and covered in dirt. There were areas on the glass that had been wiped by those locals too scared to chance the ghosts by going inside. They had instead pressed their faces against the window to see what lurked between rooms.

  Dad started to fidget with the screen door, which was hanging on by only one hinge. The screen itself was cut, the loose side dangling. Suddenly, the door broke off its last rusty hinge, sending Dad barreling backward. He caught his footing before he fell all the way. He quickly set the door down as if he had meant to remove it all along.

  “Would ya stop messin’ around with everything?” Mom pushed past him. “Can’t you tell this house is already in debt to the devil?”

  She stopped at the wide front door. Three of its four panels were gone along with its knob and lock. She shook her head before pushing the door open the rest of the way.

  Stepping into the house was like crossing the threshold into a tomb. Dry brown leaves were piled along the wood floor, which had originally been painted as a large clock face. A wide circling staircase centered the house. At one time, it had been grand. By then, the only things not stolen off it were the steps.